Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute,We shall be saying, finally,With tremendous eloquence, Lead us.When we have totally surendered to that beauty,We shall be a mighty kindness.— Rumi

Now we settle into the quiet, dark time out of time; the time between Solstice and the New Year, or else Twelfth Night. These are the Halcyon Days, a magical time of peace and calm. Soon enough, we will be required to get back to being productive, busy, and “normal.”

But for now, I invite you to slow down, and align yourself with the soft rhythms of the light and the dark. Especially the dark, which we deeply feel at this time.

In the world’s Creation tales, from science stories to most ancient oral traditions, the darkness comes before the light. Astronomers tell us that about ninety-five percent of the Universe is comprised of dark matter, which is the only known explanation of the anomalies we see in the motion of light particles in our galaxy. And it is dark matter, in the form of a supermassive black hole, that binds and is at the very heart and birthplace of our own galaxy.

So, we can conclude, the Universe is, first and foremost, comprised of darkness. If that is true, then perhaps we should change our views about condemning what is Dark, and worshipping only what is Light.

A perfect example of this would be the spiritual archetype of the dark feminine. Feared, vilified and despised in many cultures, She is also an abiding symbol of the sacred, sometimes in those very same societies.

As Kelley Hunter, an astrologer who received her Ph.D. from her work on the psychological and spiritual meaning of dark matter has noted, our word “matter” is from the Latin, “mater,” which means Mother. So, she muses, “Dark matter is the dark Mother. And a dark Goddess appears in every culture…even recent DNA research has shown that we all come from a shared ancestress from the heart of Africa. So we all have a dark mother.”

She continues, “The dark-faced Goddesses, whether they be blue, black, or brown..are the Goddesses of mystery, like the black Madonna — who offer miracles and healings, and initiation, and go beyond the rational. In that way, they’re meta-physical and irrational, which is why they often have demonic reputations.”

Over these Halcyon days, while we nibble on gingerbread and sip eggnog, let us get cozy with the Dark, and savor its gifts to us.